Suchergebnisse

World agriculture accounts for approximately 14% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas. The share of agriculture in total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU 28 increased from 8.7% in 2007 to about 10.3% in 2012. This includes methane and nitrous oxide emissions (European Environment Agency; Gugele et al., 2005; Beach et al., 2008). This increase is mainly explained by emission reductions in the rest of the economy. Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture remained limited in the recent past.Options to reduce emissions in agriculture depends on macro-economic trends, including international trade, agricultural policies, economic growth and consumption patterns. Global trade patterns will affect the regional distribution of agricultural production and the corresponding greenhouse gas emissions. The ability to introduce cost-effective measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are difficult to assess on a global scale. To tackle this problem there is a need for an interdisciplinary model instrument, in which both knowledge from macro and trade economy and natural sciences are included.The global equilibrium model MAGNET (Modular Applied GeNeral Equilibrium Tool) is developed by LEI and is an adaptation to the GTAP model (Woltjer & Kuiper, 2014). The main purpose of MAGNET is to provide a globally applied general equilibrium modelling framework, having the standard GTAP model as the core. MAGNET is complemented with the greenhouse gas emission dataset for the year 2007 that is made available by the GTAP consortium. The database includes emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous dioxide (N2O) and methane (CH4). N2O and CH4 emissions are especially relevant for the agricultural sector. The incorporation of these emissions in MAGNET enables us to analyse current and future greenhouse gas emissions under different policies and mitigation measures on a global scale, simultaneously taking into account interactions between the rest of the economy (by sectors) and across regions in the world.The GTAP emissions dataset estimates the share of European agriculture in total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU 28 to be about 11.5% in 2007. This deviates from total emission figures on Europe as presented by the European Environment Agency (EEA). The presentation will focus on some possible explanations for this difference. We will compare gaps in the dataset in agriculture and the rest of the economy. Next we will report the emission per EU member state in a 2020 baseline scenario. Here we will present percentage differences in changes in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 vis-a-vis a baseyear in 2012.

The threats of climate change, food security, resource depletion and energy security are driving society towards a sustainable low-carbon future. Within this paradigm, biomass plays an invaluable role in meeting the food, feed, energy and material needs of future generations. Current EU thinking advocates biomass for high-value materials, which is not aligned with EU public policy support for 'lower value' bioenergy applications. 'High-technology' and 'no bioenergy mandate' pathways explore market conditions that generate a more equitable distribution between competing biomass conversion technologies and competing biomass and fossil technologies. In achieving greater equity, these pathways ease biomass market tensions; enhance EU food security; improve EU biobased trade balances; accelerate biomaterial sectors' output performance and favour macroeconomic growth. Moreover, an additional 80% increase in the oil price signals a tipping point in favour of first generation biofuels, whilst simultaneously boosting output in advanced material conversion technologies even more than the high-technology pathway. ; Published

As the EU is moving towards a low carbon economy and seeks to further develop its renewable energy policy, this paper quantitatively investigates the impact of plausible energy market reforms from the perspective of bio-renewables. Employing a state-of-the-art biobased variant of a computable general equilibrium model, this study assesses the perceived medium-term benefits, risks and trade-offs which arise from an advanced biofuels plan, two exploratory scenarios of a more 'sustainable' conventional biofuels plan and a 'no-mandate' scenario. Consistent with more recent studies, none of the scenarios considered present significant challenges to EU food-security or agricultural land usage. An illustrative advanced biofuels plan simulation requires non-trivial public support to implement whilst a degree of competition for biomass with (high-value) advanced biomass material industries is observed. On the other hand, it significantly alleviates land use pressures, whilst lignocellulose biomass prices are not expected to increase to unsustainable levels. Clearly, these observations are subject to assumptions on technological change, sustainable biomass limits, expected trends in fossil fuel prices and EU access to third-country trade. With these same caveats in mind, the switch to increased bioethanol production does not result in significant market tensions in biomass markets. ; Published